Scrambling the Troops

We found out late yesterday that every Academic College at UT Martin is meeting today at 4 p.m. to hear the latest information about budget cuts from the administration. According to a major administrator, this round of cuts will only be affecting administrative staff, but plans for up to a 15 percent cut for Fall 2009 must be made in case Gov. Bredesen must make that large a cut from the state's universities.

That would translate into major cuts from the UTM Division of Academic Affairs up to $2 million. We are projecting that Dr. Jerald Ogg, vice chancellor for Academic Affairs, could cut every lecturer and instructor and campus and not reach the $2 million level, so major changes (READ: CUTTING PROGRAMS OR COLLEGES) could be in store for UTM.

Because this is so important, The Pacer is scrambling to cover each of those meetings this afternoon in order to report on the findings for each college to the student body. We will be running online updates this afternoon and possibly putting out a special print edition to spread the information to students.

This coverage will be supplimented with news about the sudden closing of the Skyhawk Card Office on Monday, including the firing of the staff in a manner that can only be described as without tact. The Student Government Association will also meet tonight at 9 p.m. to discuss these issues.

Stay tuned to www.utmpacer.com for more information as it becomes available.

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Scary-lantern? (Flickr Photos)

Scary-lantern?
Originally uploaded by archelenon

I realize that I haven't blogged or posted photos to Flickr in a while. But really, nobody has any comments? I'm disappointed!

I might have more time to blog this weekend or in the coming weeks, as we approach Thanksgiving Break.

I'm definitely going to try to post more pictures with my pretty new camera... Oh, did I fail to mention that I have a Nikon D90 now? Sorry...I didn't want to advertise it right away.

Fall Break: Money, Money, Money, Money (and a little Geography)

Fall Break started for Karen and me on Friday afternoon, when we frantically packed and got ready to go to Jackson after a busy Friday. Her Thursday-Friday involved Spanish, Voice Pedagogy, and Aural Skills tests, so she had no time to pack. I had three geography tests (Geog of Europe, Remote Sensing and Cartography) Monday-Wednesday, so by Thursday I was ready to get a break (and thus went to the awesome UTM-Eastern Illinois football game) and didn't pack for Jackson.

We were only kind of late (later than said we would get there, but still in time to eat supper before Julie and the kids got there!) We called it an early night because Karen, Anita, and I had to get up and go to Memphis early the next day.

We got to Memphis around 10:30, and I was promptly dropped off at the Apple store while Karen and Anita looked at wedding dresses and bridesmaid dresses. Lucky for everyone, the store had both the right dresses and a good deal, so we were spared a drive to Low's Bridal in Brinkley, Arkansas, to continue the quest. I was able to burn an hour at Apple before "burning out." One can only look at the same tech stuff for so long, without drooling or running out of things to play with.

So I sat outside for a while.

For an hour. But the weather was very nice! The high was only 85, and that didn't occur until later in the day, so my guess is that it was upper 70s, with mostly sunny (I watched the frontal boundary move through the area with puffy cumulus clouds.)

On top of doing some impromptu meteorology, I also took an amateur's stab at analyzing the urban landscape around me. In case you aren't familiar with the Apple store in Memphis, it is technically located in the Saddle Creek outdoor shopping center of Germantown. The area is easily describable as affluent, with its upper-middle class shoppers, expensive clothing stores, Williams Sonoma, and Apple. Needless to say, I felt a bit out of place with my blue jeans and UNC shirt...

But I wish I had had my camera. I got a few shots of the area when Anita and Karen came back (my camera was in the car) but there were a lot of good photo opportunities I missed!

I thought long and hard about the whole Saddle Creek set up, and in the end I decided that I like the concept and (mostly) approve of its design. The layout of the main section (there are two smaller sections across the road) is similar to an "M" with parking inside the outer set of shops and building space for two stores at the focal point in the middle of the shape. If you are really curious, see a PDF of the layout.


At the two bends in the outer set of shops are brick facades with Roman-esque arched openings. The store fronts themselves are different, as per each parent corporation's choosing, but they mostly work together in a modern design theme that incorporates similar materials--glass, steel, and brick--and shades to form a unified front that doesn't have weird juxtapositions. My guess of when it was built was off a little: I was thinking mid-'90s, but according to their Web site, www.shopsofsaddlecreek.com, the complex was built in the late '80s. My guess of the age was based on a few small signs of wear: seams in the concrete that have been filled with a slightly different color; cracks in mortar of the brick columns; a couple businesses that are have closed in the last few months.

The site as a whole is definitely still economically viable. There were a lot of people out shopping, and many demographics were present: Caucasian, Asian-American, African-American; rich, white collar, not-so-wealthy; geeks (for the Apple store) and trendy high schoolers; old and young. This place appeals to everyone. If I had to guess at the motivating factors for people to shop here, I would say that it's the atmosphere and the quality of shops that draw people. The outdoor atmosphere is fun and relatively peaceful (despite the tornado siren test that took place around noon.) The closed-in space feel more intimate than a huge megamall. There is light rock and oldies music playing on outdoor speakers, and there is a decent amount of green space (and two water fountains) included also.

There is also an effort to connect with the community. The shops of Saddle Creek currently are sponsoring an outdoor art exhibit of painted horse statues (remind anyone of the Berlin Bears?) in honor of the 60th Germantown Charity Horse Show.


So while I had to sit there for an hour, at least I got to put my geography skills to good use, right?

The rest of the day was spent spending money (that second theme I referred to in my title). Mostly buying clothes on my part...I'm sorry to say it, but I spent money at Gap and Old Navy. (Didn't I used to hate those places with a passion...?)

Anyway, to continue the money theme, I've spent a large part of today dealing with money. I've set out a basic plan of setting up an IRA, converting my existing savings account to a money market account with a better interest rate, putting some money in a one-year CD through Capital One's online banking services (top 3 in terms of high rates nationally, and a very stable bank according to multiple services), and finally investing some in either stocks or mutual funds. To work toward the IRA and investing, I set up an account on etrade.com and started examining the wide variety of options they offer. I also checked my credit report online for my free annual check.

Again, money's the big theme. Interwoven with geography and money have been Berlin (I've been catching up on some reading and now need to catch up on writing), family (we went to the UT Experiment Station today!), food (of course), and photography (I want a Nikon D90!)

The girls at the experiment station.

I kind of doubt I'll post again during the break, but suffice it to say that tomorrow will be spent out in Jackson with Karen and catching up with my Germany buddy Tracy Shelton and his wife, and work on the Berlin research. (Hopefully I'll get some photos posted to Flickr soon, either of Berlin stuff I've been meaning to upload or of new stuff from this fall.)

Exciting stuff, I know!

A Break Down of Physical Geography Class

I hate to dwell on a subject like this for too long, but since I haven't blogged in a while and I'm sitting in class "learning" about water...why not share this misery with the world?

Since we are in a geology lab for class, the desks are lab desks that are arranged in a large "E" shape. From where Dr. Shem normally stands at the computer stand/podium, 7 of the 13 students sit with their backs to him. At least three or four look like they are about to fall asleep. In fact he just asked two of them if they wanted to listen to him or sleep. I'll wager that they wanted to answer, "Sleep."

We have a football player who pays attention roughly half the time. There are four students across the room who are multitasking, working on other homework or projects while half-paying attention.

There are two of us with laptops, and we're both half-paying attention, too.

I know it sounds bad.

But if you were required to take a course that covered basic high-school-level science with a few "collegiate" concepts (primarily mathematic, how novel a concept!) thrown in, and the professor was neither well organized nor good at holding students' attention, don't you think you might not like the class?

We've reached the point in the class where I've now realized that he has nothing to add to the knowledge base of this subject over the text book. I could really just read the textbook before the test and be fine in this class. If you throw in my existing knowledge of the subject matter from previous classes (high school biology, Geology 111 and 113, and Intro to Meteorology) I could teach myself physical geography...

I have a feeling that Dr. Shem might not fair to well on the course evaluations at the end of the semester.

Half a Month Later...

How can it possibly be August 9 already?

Things have been really, really busy since coming back from Berlin. Catching up on sleep. Catching up on work. Catching up on Karen-time. You get the idea.

Work has been insanely busy. I have updated a ton of Web sites in the last two weeks: Psychology, ECCE, ITC, Financial Aid, Honors Program, Visual and Theatre Arts, etc. The last two weeks have been the final weeks of my co-student worker, Hannah Burcham, who is going to Mississippi State University with the National Student Exchange program. In the mean time, we've been training her highly capable replacement, Jen DeYeso in all of the wonderful jobs (and the tedious ones, too) we take care of on a daily basis at the ITC. Mix into this helping the occasional professor who wanders over for help, working on the registrations for three different training topics coming up in August and September, and planning for the training session I am doing this coming Tuesday — you get the idea of how busy it's been.

I've also spent some time working on the TNGIC summer newsletter, getting together the stories we will be covering for the end-of-August publication. Now I need to start laying it out in InDesign this week before things get even more hectic with The Pacer and that little thing called school.

Speaking of my favorite newspaper, I worked the last few days of this week with The Pacer's adviser, Tomi Parrish, on buying the remaining iMacs we need to fully handle our computing needs for the coming years. The good thing about these Macs is that we should be able to get a lot more use out of them than we've been getting out of the PCs we've used for years. Now they just have to be shipped and have software ghosted onto them by the Technical Services folks and brought over to our office. I'm looking forward to kicking off the new year with lunch and training on August 18. Then we start working on our First Flight edition for the incoming freshmen...and then off we go!

In other news, Karen and I have discovered the addicting Web site Nutrimirror — an online food journal that can really help ANYONE trying to eat healthier. As Karen saw on a newscast on her Destin vacation, keeping a food journal is one of the best ways to eat healthier and get/stay in shape. Nutrimirror is doing just that, and with time it should be a big help.

Finally, with all this going on a few of my other projects are still hounding me to start/finish them, including: more research and reading on my Scholars project, a photo-video for a wedding at the end of August, posting more photos from Berlin, and buying my books from Amazon/Half.com. Anything else...? This is more than I can keep up with in my head. Good thing I have to-do lists!

Post-Berlin

I am back!

And now with nearly one whole day behind me since flying back yesterday, I feel like I'm recovering nicely from any jetlag.

My travels to get here were certainly interesting, as some of you have already heard. For those who don't know, I almost had to spend the night in Amsterdam yesterday after I was put "on standby" when I got to the AMS airport. When I checked in at Tegel Airport in Berlin the check-in people couldn't give me a boarding pass for the flight from Amsterdam to Memphis, so they told me to go to the transfer desk at AMS. As it turns out, there are 8 transfer desks at AMS, but I quickly figured out with a transfer desk near the beginning of every specific gate hallway (B through H and M) and assumed that I should go to the desk for the gate of my flight (E9).

I was correct, and stood in line at the desk for nearly half an hour just to have the attendant tell me that they overbooked the flight because they have so many transfers (whatever that means) and that at that point I didn't have a seat on the plane. She told me to go to the gate and go through security (at the gate) and that at the desk for that flight they would try to get me a seat. I wasn't the only one waiting; four other people were currently seatless. One guy who looked like a business traveler got his seat fairly quickly, within about five minutes of sitting down. Then about 15 minutes prior to the scheduled departure time the other three got seats, and I was the last person waiting. Finally, after all the last two or three last-minute passengers showed up and went through security, the staff found me a seat. I then went into the tunnel to get on the plane (nearly the last in line) and as I waited a stewardess came up the tunnel from the plane asking for a Mr. Cook. She changed my seat on the spot in pen, as I assume someone had the seat they assigned to me.

In the end, it was a great seat. I had the aisle seat on the second row of the economy class seating, which meant that I was one of the first to get food and drink service and was one of the first people off the plane in Memphis. The flight itself was pretty much uneventful, if not a little annoying because my "neighbor" in the window seat next to me was a 9 or 10 year old boy whose family (of 4 other kids plus his mom) were somewhere in the back of the plane. The first several hours were the annoying part, as he kept the window shade up, letting in the blinding sunlight on the video screens. I eventually switched to my iPod (for as long as its battery would hold out) and eventually went to sleep. The service was great, the food was better than usual, and the flight arrived in Memphis about 40 minutes early, so on the whole I can't complain.

After riding to Jackson with Mom and Dad, we ate at Chik-fil-a and went to Granny and Pop's house for dessert and to get the key to Anita's house were I spent the night. I've been doing laundry, working on photos, and entertaining myself online while waiting for them to get back from their Destin vacation. They should get back at 6:15 according to their borrowed GPS. Only 37 more minutes to go!

Berlin Days 12 and 13 - Last Days

The last two days have flown by as I have prepared both to see Barack Obama and to fly home. Yesterday I spent most of my day in and around the Tiergarten as I took pictures and looked at the "Diplomatic Quarter." I then went to see what the setup around the Siegessäule for Obama speech today. They had most of the barricades in place but foot and bike traffic could still get through, which meant that we on foot (or bike) had the entire Strasse des 17. Junis to walk down by ourselves without cars! It was pretty neat. After observing tourists for a while around the Brandenburg Gate (and eating Dunkin' Donuts) and the Bundestag (and looking at the NBC platform where I assume Brian Williams led the nightly newscast) I headed back into the Tiergarten for a while for more pictures and then came back to the hotel.

Today I finished up last minute shopping and got most of my packing done this morning. I left the hotel at 2 p.m. (five hours early) to get ready for Obama's speech. When I got off the Unter den Linden S-bahn stop I came up from the stop into a crowd of people. They were all crowded around the Hotel Adlon where Obama stayed and was supposedly leaving soon. After standing around for nearly 30 minutes I decided it wasn't worth the wait, so I started walking down Strasse des 17. Junis until I reached the barricade where people were starting to wait to go through security. That was nearly 3 p.m.

After standing around for an hour, they opened the barricade where the crowd then RAN to get to security off to the sides of the street. Security took around 15 minutes to get through (as they hand searched every bag, made you take pictures with cameras to prove they weren't bombs, drink from bottles to prove it wasn't gasoline or explosives...) and then I made it to a good spot less than 15 yards from the podium. After noticing a lot of people around me sitting, I decided to join the sit. After all, it was going to be another 3 hours till Obama spoke. I started to listen to people around me, three 20-something Americans who have lived in Berlin for around four years. They were very interesting to listen to, though I didn't talk to them for a while. A live band was playing off to the side of the Siegessäule pumping lots of loud bass into the crowd.

Obama started speaking about 15 minutes late and spoke for around 30 minutes. Read about it here at CNN.com.

After the speech I worked my way through the thousands of people to a spot where a lot of people were cutting through the Tiergarten to Potsdammer Platz, where I sat for supper in Sony Center before coming back here.

Tomorrow I check out and fly out of Berlin at 10:20 a.m., and then again from Amsterdam at 2:05 p.m. I'll be getting back to Memphis around 4:50 p.m. See you all soon!

Berlin Day 11 and plans for 12 - Sachsenhausen and Tiergarten

Sorry for not blogging yesterday, after spending at least five hours at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp memorial (<- link to Wikipedia article) I didn't feel like doing much of anything. The site is enormous — much bigger than I thought it would be. Dr. Rogers and I walked nearly all of it and read plenty of the history of the place through at least six of its lives.

Originally it was mostly a field with a factory (or was it a brewery?) when the Nazis claimed the no-longer used facility and built an SS training camp around it in 1936. Soon after its creation, they began holding political prisoners and homeless or jobless people which they used to build the camp further. Because it was so close to Berlin and one of the first camps to be created, Sachsenhausen became a model for other concentration camps. Though it was not intended to be an extermination camp (like Auschwitz) nearly 100,000 of the 200,000 prisoners (consisting of Jews, political opponents, conscientious objectors, Russian and British soldiers, and people from every nation taken over by the Nazis) were murdered by the SS or died because of the camp's horrid conditions.

In 1945 the camp was liberated by the Russian and Polish armies and soon after the war it became the Soviet's Special Camp No. 7 in which Nazi leaders and people tried under the Soviet Military Tribunal were held, often with the same terrible conditions as under the Nazis. The camp was finally closed in 1950, and in 1956 the East German government established a memorial site there. Today it has grown into both memorial and museum, as we experienced.

Having now seen nearly half a dozen memorials and museums in Berlin Dr. Rogers and I came to the conclusion that Berlin would make a good place to study just museums and museum design and aesthetics. There are obviously many ways to go about displaying historical events and Berlin rivals any world capital (Washington D.C. included) on the variety of its museums. I've also noticed a large upswing in tourism this week. I might have mentioned it earlier in a blog, but a lot more nationalities and languages have been easy to find this week. Italian, Spanish, Russian, English (both British and American), Turkish, French, some Asian languages (and obviously German) have all been accounted for. That's basically all the languages I recognize when I hear them, and obviously even that is limited because I'm not sure which Asian languages I was hearing.

All of that goes to say that the International element of my research is still in play, but it is in question. Neither Dr. Rogers nor I could really assert nor discredit the international elements here, but to prove it in a paper is going to require statistical research and also comparison to cities of similar size or status (e.g. national capitals). This means I'm going to have to find statistics for Berlin and a decent size list of other cities such as D.C., London, Paris, New York, Chicago, L.A., Milan (Italy) etc. That will all have to be sorted out in the next few weeks.

That's all we did yesterday; we were too tired to go to the Hertha vs. Liverpool game. It's just as well; the final score was 0:0 (teams can tie in "friendlies" in soccer). Today Dr. Rogers is flying out, or probably already has by now (11:20). I'm going to check out the embassy row and the Tiergarten this afternoon and see what things are like for Obama's "Fan Mile" for tomorrow. I plan to get there early, though he isn't speaking until 7. They've got some information about the Fan Mile in the paper, so I'm reading up on what's not allowed into the fan mile and where it starts, etc.

Be seeing you soon!

Berlin Day Ten - Checkpoint Charlie and the Zoo

As I figured yesterday, Dr. Rogers and I met up at the famous Checkpoint Charlie this morning to see the site that served as a main crossing point between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. We went through the museum, which was very nice considering that it is a private collection though a bit expensive. The student price alone was 7.5 Euros, which is roughly 10 USD. It took us about two hours to read and view information about the Cold War and the Wall (its construction, those who tried to escape, those who helped, how people escaped, etc.) and some of the original artifacts (cars with hidden storage, two small helicopters, a hot air balloon) used to escape. The information signs were amazingly in German, English, French, and Russian all the way through the exhibit, and many of the signs looked like they had been around since the late 1960s when a private investor and some college students began the collection.

As seen in great detail at the Wall museum as well as subtly throughout the city at different museums, monuments and former Communist sites, it has been amazing to see and study how desperately the DDR tried to keep its citizens inside its borders. The cruelty and inhumanity with which the DDR used to keep a grip on its people is only surpassed in magnitude by the great ingenuity with which people tried to escape. These people weren't necessarily those under heavy scrutinization by the Stasi (Communist state security) but rather mothers or children or fiances or normal college students who wanted to be reunited with their family and build a life with better opportunities. Not many of them went on to what we would consider great fame; aside from being listed in newspaper archives, books, and this museum, most went on to live quiet lives as doctors, teachers, human rights activists, etc. There was actually one student who helped with the escapes who went on to become a West German Astronaut, but that's all that I know of.

After the museum we escaped from Checkpoint Charlie (tourist central!) and got a drink around lunch while deciding what to do. We didn't really want to do any more museums after all we've covered in the last few days, so we opted for the zoo instead. It was a good, fun choice. We ended the day with lots of animal photos and really tired feet. My feet have actually been so sore that they haven't even been fully recovering over night.(Germany's sidewalks and cobblestone walkways just aren't very forgiving.) We stopped in a shoe store off of Ku'damm and I bought some expensive (read: 20 Euros) gel shoe insoles to hopefully solve my foot woes.

After that we headed to a fish place on Ku'damm for supper, but I wasn't in the mood for fish so I opted again for an awesome pasta. Dr. Rogers made the mistake of ordering some fish that wasn't cooked, but rather at room temperature which he didn't enjoy. Oops...He said he should have known better.

Anyway, after we ate we figured out how to meet up in the morning: we're going to see the Sachsenhausen concentration camp site/museum in the morning and might go to the Bundestag (free English tours on Tuesday) or the Hertha BSC vs. Liverpool soccer match in the afternoon.

I've pretty much given up hope on getting my photos uploaded in a timely manner. Look for them toward the end of this week and when I get home.

Tchüß!

Berlin Days Eight and Nine - Busyness

The last 48 hours have flown by a lot faster than I thought they would! Yesterday, my supposed "off day" because of the rain ended up quite a bit useful. The thunderstorm slated for the day moved through over night, so the day ended up pretty nice. After sleeping in late (15 minutes from the close of breakfast) I got up and did a little work on photos before heading out for an early lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe just down the street. I was the first customer of the day, as they let me come in about 15 minutes before they officially started lunch.

After that I was tired again for some reason, so I got another hour nap in before talking to Karen and my parents on Skype. After that I dabbled with my photos again for a little bit in Photoshop but then decided it was too nice to stay in any longer so I thought I would go to the Pergamonmuseum. As luck would have it, a minute after I got on the bus it started to rain pretty heavily. Just for fun I took the bus to the end of the line to see what that side of Berlin was like. It goes along the south and is more of a blue-collar, lower middle class area. There were a few signs of Turkish populations (via their businesses) on the streets the bus went around.

From the end of the line I had to figure out how to get back to the middle of town to Museum Island, so I caught a subway that went to Alexanderplatz. When I left the subway it was sunny and nice again, so I took the opportunity to take some pictures with the sun while I had the chance. Then I made it down to Am Kupfergraben and crossed the Spree to the Pergamonmuseum where I paid 12 Euros to enter. It was worth it, as they currently have a special exhibit combining their collection on ancient Babylon with collections from the Louvre and the British Museum (the Royal British Museum? I'm not sure which British museum...) The entire collection was stunning, and I was there for over two hours. When I left it was almost completely dark, so I just found my way back to the hotel in what had become a very active night scene in a drizzly Berlin.

Today Dr. Rogers and I met up at his hotel near Gesundbrunnen, a shopping mall and major train crossing station. After walking around in Prenzlauer Berg and some of the northern districts, we paid about 7 Euros for a tour of Berlin's underground - one of three or four tours by a nonprofit company trying to preserve Berlin's underground historical bunkers, some of which pre-date World War II. We toured both a pre-war bunker and a 1970s Cold War era bunker which is built into and around the Parkstrasse U-Bahnhof. It was well worth the nearly two hours of hunching over in mostly dark, underground bunkers.

After that we thought we would try our hand at traveling south but when we arrived at the Hermannstrasse U-bahnhof we surmised that the area was similar to that of Prenzlauer Berg. We were getting hungry by that point (around 5 p.m.) so we headed back to Alexanderplatz where we planned to go to the TV tower to see the city from above (hopefully on a clear evening). We ate Italian at a nicer outdoor restaurant and sat around talking about Berlin but even then it wasn't close enough to sun down to go up to the tower. After sitting around people-watching for a while we figured we had time to watch a movie, so we went to see Get Smart (with German voice-overs) at a nearby Kino. When that ended we went up to the tower, an expensive 9.5 Euros which wasn't even really worth it because the view from the tower had a bad reflection of light on the Plexiglass and wasn't good for taking photos.

Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy again, so we'll probably spend a lot of it indoors, starting with the Checkpoint Charlie Museum.

See you all later, and sorry I haven't gotten pictures up yet. I just haven't had the time and now it's getting to be a bit overwhelming!

Berlin Day Seven - Progress

Today Dr. Rogers and I met up at Potsdammer Platz at 9 a.m. to explore western Berlin. I showed him around Potsdammer Platz in a prevailing mist-rain, which we tried to sit out in Sony Center after walking around some. Finally we just left to go to the Ku'damm area, but fortunately the drizzle let up not long after we got there.

I continued to show him around the sites that I've already been to, and we went into both the old and new sections of the Gedächtniskirche to see what it was/is like inside. It is one of the few places that I've been to that feels really touristy. By that point it was nearing lunch, so Dr. Rogers and I sat down for a drink (and I had a currywurst) at a wurst stand outside the Zoologisher Garten Bahnhof area.

Dr. Rogers asked me if I thought I was getting what I needed out of the trip, and I told him I thought so, but he wasn't so sold on all of it. Based on his other trips and studies in Europe (and because of my lack of experience in other European cities) he explained that his first impression of Berlin is that it isn't all that international like a New York, L.A., or Chicago. Sure, it has a large amount of international retail stores and restaurants, a little bit of global culture and some international tourists (not nearly as many as expected this year) but so does nearly every major capital city, including D.C., London, and Paris. He also pointed out that these same capital cities (and other major European cities) also have international business headquarters and plenty of cultural arts just like Berlin.

This is all makes sense, and wasn't even something I recognized without knowing what other capital cities are like. I did suggest that perhaps tourism is down this summer because of economic reasons, and it is possible that Berlin has become less exciting of a tourist destination than say the exciting early reunification days of the 1990s. It may be, for example, that British tourists who once considered Berlin an exotic tourist destination of the emerging eastern Europe now consider it less edgy and head to Romania (Bucharest was Dr. Rogers's example) or the Czech Republic instead. That doesn't make Berlin a has-been, just more in line with the norm. And, even if the down-tourism-year scenario is correct, it still doesn't make Berlin very different from other major places; again, just closer to normal than it used to be.

My work isn't all for naught, of course, with this new information. My field work is just revealing that my hypothesis was a bit off but still salvageable. My paper can still show the importance of Berlin in the E.U. and particularly to Germans (as most of the tourists we've seen have either been high school age or old retired Germans.) It can also show how successfully they've reunited in a short time. Plenty (practically all) of the elements of my research are still useful to my work. This is precisely why I had to do fieldwork here, to gain a real feel for Berlin without the bias of book and article writers.

After our sit we headed out to explore Charlottenburg, which is one of the nicest neighborhoods in Berlin. We both agreed that we would want to live here if we had to choose what district of Berlin in which to live. We walked around the Schloss Charlottenburg - practically empty today as compared to overflowing with tourists last year - and saw the gardens and took some pictures and then decided to take a U-bahn trip to Spandau. Spandau is far west Berlin, though it was originally a city unto itself and is older than Berlin. It still retains its own feel and doesn't really fit into the rest of Berlin, as it is more traditionally German. It was a nice visit and we had a nice supper at a restaurant next to their large church, but it wasn't really of much importance to my paper.

Now I am quite tired and have even more photos (100+) to go through. It is supposed to be very rainy (thunderstorm) conditions tomorrow, so I'm going to stay in and sleep and work through photos instead of getting out and about.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Berlin Day Six - Long Day

It's just about 10 p.m. here in Berlin, and I'm wiped out! Walking around Berlin with Dr. Rogers has been an all day affair, and much like two days ago, I have over a hundred photos and not enough time to work on them tonight. It may be just as well, because it's looking like rain this weekend which means I might spend the better part of at least one day inside and just work on photos as the rain comes a-tumblin' down.

Our day started off by meeting at the Brandenburg Gate at 9 which meant a wake up call from Karen around 7. I didn't really want to get up; I was quite tired, but getting to breakfast earlier was nice since I beat the young tourist crowd. (They're still here; still loud. Maybe they'll leave this weekend?)

Anyway, we started walking down Unter den Linden toward the east, noting construction on many of the side streets as well as photographing the Russian Embassy. We turned right on Friedrichstrasse and headed south for a few blocks to look at the more built-up areas of downtown. Quite accidentally, we found ourselves at the Gendarmenmarkt, which features the Franzosicher Dom, Deutscher Dom, and the Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Konzerthaus Berlin.

Inside the Deutscher Dom is a permanent, free exhibit on the development of democracy in Germany, and my National Geographic Travel Guide lured me in because it said the fifth floor was about Germany in the EU (a big part of my paper). Well the first four floors were really quite interesting, as Dr. Rogers and I struggled to read enough German between the two of us to make sense of the exhibit. There was an English audio guide, but it didn't cover every aspect of the museum, so we tried our collective hardest to read the rest. The fifth floor was a bit disappointing, though; it is so high up in the Dom's dome that there isn't room for more than a few signs explaining the beginnings of the EU. (The Dom's dome means the cathedral's dome...that's a German-English play on words, since the German Dom means cathedral and sounds like the English Dome... Does it make a bad punster if I have to explain my jokes?)

Anyway, the exhibit took us around two hours to complete, so when we left we tried to decide where to eat lunch, only to decide that we weren't that hungry and could make it by just getting a drink from a tourist shop on Unter den Linden. From there we rested our feet for a while in the middle of the street: Unter den Linden has a wide median between the traffic lanes that has benches, wurst and drink stands, and, naturally, linden trees.

We then continued our tour by heading deeper into the former East Berlin. We made it to Museum Island around 2 p.m. about which time it started to sprinkle and our decent weather from the morning (complete with sunshine!) had disappeared. We threw around the idea of going to a museum since I thought they were free after 2 on Thursdays (it turns out they are free after 6) but the lines were pretty long and we didn't really want to waste too much time at that point. Instead, after photographing several of the museums' outside, we continued on to the Marx-Engels Platz, the Rotes Rathaus, and then Alexanderplatz.

As you will see in photos later, Alexanderplatz (called Alex by the natives) is the center of shopping and commercial business in east Berlin. It was originally developed by the Communist regime of the DDR as the showpiece quarter of the most successful country behind the Iron Curtain. It has been heavily modified and turned into a capitalist center, though many of the former pre-fab housing/apartment complexes around the quarter still show evidence of their cheap Communist-era construction. A few have been nicely redone with new facades, but many are in bad shape and are doomed (At least one ten story apartment building was completely shut down and vacant.)

After we walked around the old "Red" Berlin we decided to go on a subway adventure (much like my trip to Wedding the other day). We got on the U5 at Alexanderplatz and rode it east out into Berlin's suburbs. The suburb we visited around Wuhletal was pretty nice, more like the traditional German cities that I've seen and stayed in during my travels. There we found an old hospital complex for traumatic injuries that was built in 1890 at what was then completely out of town. Germans traditionally associate good health with nature, and the planning of the Krankenhaus (we assumed based on our observations) was that it was built to expose those who experienced trauma to nature to help with the healing process. There were also buildings for psychological study on children and teenagers, and there were several college aged people about, which led us to think that the campus might have been both hospital and medical school. I need to Google it and find out. I'll report back more later after I've had time to search (but for now I'm tired!)

We rode the S-bahn back into town and found a small, interesting Turkish restaurant in the Turkish part of Kreuzberg for supper. Neither of us know much about Turkish food, and since they didn't have the Dönner kababs famous to Germany, we went with Hackfleisch kababs which were really good. I intentionally planned our stop in that area because the U-bahn station went both north-south on a line toward Dr. Roger's hotel and east-west (the closed U1 line) toward mine. I took a bus back as far as it would go, switched to the U2 line which follows the U1 line for part of its track, and then switched back to bus to get back to my hotel before walking the last two blocks. It sounds completely complicated, no doubt, to the American readers, but it's all proof to show that you don't even have to own a car to get around in Europe. Those of you who been here before know exactly how amazing Germany's public transportation is.

It's after 11 now, and I'm going to get in bed. Dr. Rogers and I are meeting again at 9 in the morning, this time at Potsdammerplatz, to explore the west.

I'll post more tomorrow, and maybe get around to photos by tomorrow evening or Sunday.

Bis Später!

Berlin Day Five - Lazy Evening

Well as luck would have it when I walked out of the hotel after my nap for lunch, it was raining. Not a great soaking rain, but more of a Seattle rain-drizzle-mist. I kinda like those, so it ended up being okay that I left my rain jacket up in my room.

I walked down the block and around the corner to try a different restaurant on Pariserstrasse (where I ate Saturday evening). I sat down outside at a restaurant called Solo and waited for the waitress to bring a menu. (Note: almost all of the outdoor cafes and restaurants have large awnings covering their outdoor seating.)

I ordered a grilled chicken salad that came with lots of vegetables so I could hopefully fight off my low-blood sugar/lack of nutrition thing. I felt better before I had even finished. The rain had picked up to slightly more than a drizzle so I hastily walked back to the hotel and began to work on uploading photos (which are now online, by the way.)

The rain has continued most of the afternoon, so I just stayed here and talked to Karen and worked on my photos. Per Dr. Rogers's advice, I planned extra days for weather into my schedule, so it's easy enough to just shift what few plans I had for today over to Saturday and declare today a trip-holiday.

Not much else is going on, aside from the group of elephants still occupying the building. Seriously, is it really necessary to stomp around the hotel and talk obnoxiously loud? A few minutes ago a group of them tried my door handle wondering if it was a bathroom; no geniuses, those are around the corner...and are clearly labeled. At least the doors have effective locks.

That's probably all for today, folks, so expect to hear from me tomorrow!

Berlin Day Five - Lazy Morning

This morning I woke up a little late, around 8:30 when my phone started vibrating. Apparently it takes Vodafone a couple days to set up your text messaging and voicemail service, so I got not only a buzz for a text message but also then a computerized call about the voice mail. Needless to say, I'm still tired.

I don't have any plans today for one, because I'm tired and for two, because it is super cloudy and supposed to rain today. I need to finish up with photos anyway and I just woke up from a nap. I was feeling weird (light- and kinda fuzzy- headed) after I got back from breakfast and I showered, so I just went ahead and went back to bed.

Now I'm going to go eat a real lunch somewhere. I suspect part of my feeling weird might be because of my strange eating habits the last few days (lack of blood sugar and protein perhaps?), plus I'm hungry around the lunch hour (ok, well it's 2 p.m.) anyway.

See you guys later. When I get back, I'll probably talk to Karen, check e-mail and starting naming/describing my photos from yesterday.

Berlin Day Four - Adventure

"Well now what do I do?"

After covering most of the places I had planned for both today and tomorrow, I sat down at a cafe this morning to think about what else to do  while I still had some sunshine.

I woke up early with Karen calling me on Skype at 7:30 (12:30 a.m. Central) so we could talk before she went to bed and so I would actually get up that early to use the sun (Weather.com told me it would be sunny) while I had the opportunity. So after a quick breakfast (filled with the young German hordes I talked about yesterday) I left for my adventure.

I first took the bus up Ku'damm to the Zoologischer Garten Bahnhof. Here I picked up an S-bahn train to the Hauptbahnhof - Berlin's main train station. As I did with my host family and a group from UTM two years ago, I knew that starting at the Hauptbahnhof would provide me the opportunity to walk by the Bundeskanzleramt (Office of the Federal Chancellery) and the Bundestag before heading to Pariser Platz and the Brandenburg Gate. Again.

I took photos of those two political buildings and then continued on to search for more political buildings between the Gate and Potsdammer Platz. There are quite a lot of political buildings along Wilhelmstrasse and what is known as the Altes Regierungsviertel (old regulations (?) quarter). This area was the center of political activity during the days of of the Prussian empire through both World Wars until it became part of the DDR and the Soviets moved their political buildings to the middle of East Berlin. Since reunification, several political buildings have moved back to the Wilhelmstrasse area, including several offices of the German Bundeslände (Federal States), the upper chamber of Germany's parliament in the Bundesrat, the Federal Finance Ministry, the Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection, the Minstry for Employment and Social Affairs, and the British Embassy. Needless to say there were lots of photos to be taken.

As I meandered about on Wilhelmstrasse, I also walked around parts of Potsdammer Platz and Leipziger Platz to take photos of several important business/economy buildings. I will elaborate more about these on Flickr. I had intended to cover this area tomorrow, but it seemed to work out fine today.

After leaving Potsdammer Platz/Leipziger Platz, I walked back to Wilhemstrasse and didn't know quite what to do. I knew that I had a few more hours of sun, so I sat down at a cafe and pulled out the maps and National Geographic Guidebook and decided to keep walking down Wilhelmstrasse. Without intending to, I came to a stretch of the Berlin Wall that has been left intact and what is known as the Topographie des Terrors (Topography of Terror), an outdoor exhibit at the ruins of the Gestapo headquarters that covers the history of the Gestapo/SS/SD acts of Terror in WWII. I didn't really want to see the exhibit, as it isn't all that useful for my paper, but behind it there was a temporary exhibit on the significance of Wilhelmstrasse through the last two centuries, so I walked and read through that exhibit instead. The exhibit ended at the back of the Bundesrat next to Martin-Gropius-Bau (an art exhibition hall) that wasn't all that interesting to me, so after a few photos I headed back to Potsdammer Platz to do more photo work.

I photographed most of the large buildings around Potsdammer Platz - the Deutsche Bahn tower, the Mercedes-Benz tower, the Price Waterhouse Cooper building, Sony Center, and the mall at the Mercedes-Benz quarter - Arkaden. By this point my feet were getting tired, so I decided to check out the mall. They have a lot of high fashion clothing stores and other mall type stores (similar to on Ku'damm) so the only places I checked out were a book store and a Gelato-Eis (ice cream) cafe. I ordered a Tartufo based on its picture on the menu. It had chocolate and coffee flavored gelato, whipped cream, and a chocolate wafer. After the first few bites I noticed a bit of an odd flavor (it had a whang to it, as my mother would say) and I looked at my receipt to see that it was a "Tartufo Eierlikor" - Tartufo Irish Liquor. Oops. I don't know if it was Irish Liquor flavoring...but I'm going to bet not. Live and learn, oh well.

I was about to leave Potsdammer Platz by the same route I took yesterday when I saw signs for the observation deck of the Mercedes-Benz tower. I had planned to go to that before I left but I didn't know where it was until I saw it as I left the mall. For a student price of 2.5 Euros I took the fastest elevator in Europe to the top (Mom and Rachel will be so proud me. And terrified.) It takes you up 24 floors (90.15 meters) in 20 seconds, about 8.5 meters per second. That's not all that fast, when you think about it: 8.5 meters per second equals 30.6 km/hour. It's just straight up in the air instead of in a car along the road.

Anyway, enough of the scientific conversions lecture. (If this were Monty Python, someone would be yelling "Get on with it!") The view from the top was the best I've had of Berlin yet. I've been to the top of the Bundestag twice and the Siegelsäule statue once and they've got nothing on this. Of course...I haven't been to the Fernsehturm yet, either. It's the highest point in Berlin, so more exciting "aerial" photos may be coming to a Flickr near you soon.

Once I was back firmly on the ground I headed back to the hotel where I talked to a waking Karebear and Anita. After a two hour nap, I woke up and went to the grocery store. When I got back I ate some of my bread with Nutella for supper (I wasn't hungry, again...odd) and then talked to Karen, Anita, Granny, Pop, and Mr. Carroll (sp?) before starting to blog.

Now that I'm almost done, I'm realizing that I probably won't have time to get my photos up on Flickr before my internet runs out at 10:15 p.m. I've planned it so that I don't have to pay for it at all today - my purchase last night runs until 10:15 tonight and then I'll buy again in the morning, so that will be one last day (nighttime tonight + daytime of my last day here when I fly out) that I don't have to pay for internet. Someone remind me to kiss my wireless router with free UTM internet when I get back to Martin...

Anyway, I leave you with a few observations and things I've been thinking about in my walks around town.

Tchüss!

-------
1) One thing that Americans may never get used to in any moderate to large size German city is the smells. And most of them are offensive smells. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good smelling things to be found around here, but for every fresh bakery or cafe there are at least two or three smelly manholes emitting sewage smells. Add to the mix plenty of Germans who fit the lack of hygiene stereotype, crowded buses and subway cars, and men and women wearing enough perfume and cologne to cover up their own scent and you'll have a gagging mess on your hands.

2) Fortunately, Berlin is unlike most large cities in the world that are completely jam-packed with high rise buildings, industrial sites and disgusting air. Unlike London, L.A., Beijing, and more, Berlin has so much green space that cleans the air - so there are places to escape from the smells mentioned above.

3) There are thousands of German words that I don't know. Even if I pick up on dozens of words every time I come here, at one trip per year (thus far) I'll master the German language about the time I die. Something should be done to fix this.

Berlin Day Three - Afternoon

Today has certainly been an interesting day. After my blogging this morning, checking e-mail and talking to Karen and Anita on Skype, it was after 2 p.m. and I was tired so I laid down on the bed to read some of the travel brochures I picked up at the hotel desk and then decided a nap was in order (as I had nothing else planned and it was still overcast.)

I awoke around 3 to the sound of a herd of young Germans thundering through the hotel as a high-school-aged tour group got here. Their presence might make breakfast in the morning interesting... The breakfast area isn't small, but it's not large enough for a full hotel's worth of guests either. I wonder how long they are staying...

Anyway, I still had no plans as the afternoon wasted away, so I thought I would try taking a risk. I pulled up a Berlin map, closed my eyes and pointed my finger — to the Wedding district of Mitte. I had made no previous plans in my itinerary to go to Wedding, and none of the tour guide books mention it, so my curiosity was sparked. I googled it and found via Wikipedia that Wedding is a working-class district with very few attractions.

So naturally, I went.

After quickly checking Weather.com and being informed that it was still calling for overcast skies for several hours (but no rain) I left the hotel. Weather.com lied a little as it was actually sprinkling, but it stopped by the time I arrived in Wedding via the bus and U-bahn system.

When I got there, I immediately understood why Wedding is not mentioned in the guide books. The Wedding district formally belonged to the French after WWII , and as it borders Pankow to the east, it was one of the first sites for construction of the Wall. Modern day Wedding is quite shabby, filled with poorer Berliners and plenty of non-Germans. I walked down Müllerstrasse which turns into Chausseenstrasse which turns into Friedrichstrasse, following the route that the U6 subway line takes underground. The walk revealed the dirtier side of Berlin, one that has seen neither corporate/government reconstruction or much gentrification. The area bleeds into Mitte in the south, and though it is definitely a melting pot area, it won't likely be a large highlight of my research paper.

After I had walked all the way to Friedrichstrasse, I saw the large Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof which doubles as both a Berlin subway and a Deutsche Bahn hub. There I picked up a pizza-brot for supper and took the S1 (or was it S2?) line to Unter den Linden to relax a little before coming back to the hotel. I later realized when I saw a sign on another tram that I wasn't supposed to eat my pizza while riding...oops.

After looking around the Pariser Platz in front of the Brandenburger Tor and ascertaining that something important was going on at the French Embassy (lots and lots and lots of black/grey Mercedes and their black suit-wearing drivers were parked around the Pariser Platz) I took a few photos and sat down for a Sprite and Apple Strudel at a bäkerei. After writing down my thoughts on the evening, I headed back to the hotel around 8.

Berlin Day Three - Morning

This morning I got up late (around 9) because I was tired after staying up to blog/post pictures to Flickr/talk to Karen on Skype. I got ready and ate breakfast — they had Brötchen today! but still no Nutella. Then I went to the nearest Deutsche Post retail store to buy a stamp for my postcard and send it to Dennis's Oma and Opa. It's only a year late; think they will mind?

Then I went phone hunting. There are no less than three T-mobile stores on the Ku'damm, but the first one I stopped at didn't have any cheap prepaid phones (all were over 50 Euros), so I kept walking east on Ku'damm (like I did yesterday) and decided I should go to Saturn (the electronics store). I'm really glad I went, because the place is (as I suspected) HUGE! I would have so much fun in Saturn if I lived here permanently.

I quickly found the Handy section and began to look at the prepaid phones (German's call cell phones handys). There were a lot of options and prices so I went with the cheapest - 15 Euros. If I understood the sign correctly, the Vodafone SIM card that comes with the phone is good for 465 hours of connectivity to the Vodafone cell towers and 10 hours of talk time - plenty for me to talk to Dr. Rogers when he gets here later this week.

I don't know if I could even receive international calls or how many minutes it would cost me, but if you want to give it a shot I'll e-mail you my number (don't want to post it for the world to see or anything.)

After I bought the phone, I went to a Plus (grocery store) and bought a few snacks to keep around my hotel room for when I get hungry between meals.

I'm not sure what my afternoon plans are yet. It's already 1:30 and though there were partly cloudy/mostly sunny skies this morning, the past hour or two have been overcast.

Berlin Day Two - Events and Observations

Ah, my first full day in Berlin. I felt quite good this morning after a long, hard sleep last night and good breakfast this morning at the hotel. All day has been completely overcast, so with my camera, backpack and rain jacket in tow, I headed out from the hotel around 10 a.m.

At first I walked west toward the U-Bahnhof (subway station) Adenauerplatz to see how long it would take to walk there. As I suspected yesterday and confirmed on the BVG (Berlin Transportation Group) Web site this morning, the U1 line which follows Ku'damm is closed for construction until October. Fortunately, BVG has set a bus route that follows the U1 line, and I noticed today on their electronic signs that a bus going to Tegel Airport stops along the Ku'damm. Now if only I had known that yesterday... This will make it much easier to get back to the airport next Friday.

After making it to Adenauerplatz in about 8 minutes, I started walking east back along Ku'damm, taking pictures of the myriad shops (mostly high fashion) or things with international flavor. As I point out numerous times on today's Flickr set, there are plenty of them.

I walked to the Gedächtniskirche and then took several more photos of the church and the office buildings around it. I'm a bit worried about the way my photos are turning out with this cloud cover — the sky is just a gray or white blah. Weather.com said it was supposed to shower today and tomorrow, so I'm not sure what I will do at the moment, aside from play things by ear.

I bought a postcard for Dennis's grandparents just down the street from the Gedächtniskirche, then I walked to a small park at Wittenburgplatz. It was very quaint, similar to what one might find in a German village. That was around noon, and I wasn't even hungry yet, so I decided to try to make today a two-meal day. With the large, late breakfast and normal supper, it has worked out well so far, though I'm a bit hungry now. Tomorrow when all of the stores are open (most are closed on Sundays) I plan to go to a grocery store and buy a few things to keep at the hotel.

This afternoon I spent 8 Euros at the Story of Berlin exhibit, a multimedia walk-through presentation on Berlin's history from medieval island to reunification. It was very well laid out and employed a number of great presentation methods. I spent nearly three hours there; other people kept moving on past me as I took the time to read nearly every sign in the place. It didn't add a whole lot to my research, but it helped solidify some of the reading I've done on Berlin's history.

After I finished at the exhibit, I headed back to the Hotel to relax and nap for a little while before wandering back out for supper. I found a nice cafe with decent prices in the opposite direction from where I ate last night, and had a hamburger with fries and a cappuccino to keep me going tonight!

Just a side note: I obviously didn't go to the Deutsche Oper today to see Porgy and Bess. I'm debating on whether or not to go see it (it's the only show they have all month.) It will probably come down to how much money I have later in the trip.

Finally, a few observations from today:

-German dogs are very cute and well behaved, though one did bark at me today.

-The weather really must clear up for me to get better photos. I played with some of the photos from this morning in Photoshop with varying degrees of success, but nothing can replace the gray clouds with blue sky.

-Taking a 30-minute nap in the afternoon helps a lot.

-I definitely understand Germans' love for a good cafe. The atmosphere of a relaxing cafe, sitting with friends talking and eating, is perfect for the end of a busy day (and for the Germans is made even better by adding beer and/or coffee!)

-While I was sitting at the cafe, a convertible drove past blasting "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's "Turandot" on their speakers. Completely awesome, and unheard of in America.

That's it for today; I need to go to bed!

Bis Morgen!

Berlin Day One - Observations

I'll leave you all with a few observations from today - Hopefully I'll be inspired enough to do this everyday.

Today's main observation is confirmation of my whole reason for being here: Berlin is quite the international city. Obviously, I believe this enough to base my senior Scholars project on it, but I've already gotten some examples that help back up that thesis and are encouraging for what is to come in the next two weeks.

After my last post an hour or two ago, I left the hotel to look for a place to eat. The hotel desk staff suggested I stay away from the Kurfürstendamm (one of West Berlin's main streets, and just a few feet from my hotel) but rather to check out the Pariserstrasse which is a couple streets south of the hotel. They obviously knew what they were talking about, and within a few minutes I had walked by two sushi restaurants, an Italian pizza place, two or three typical "German" pubs and a Mexican (Hispanic) restaurant. The diversity, like I said, just points to the modern, international nature of Berlin that I will looking for and documenting all week.

(Side note: One thing you should understand about German restaurants - most are outdoor cafes that double as bars because they all have large selections of alcoholic options. Most Germans eat large breakfasts and make lunch the main course of the day, so in the evening they get together with friends at one of these outdoor cafes for drinks and appetizers until late. Also, I decided to eat at the Mexican place - Poco Loco - and had a burrito which might have been slightly more expensive that it was worth. But at least now I'm settled in, clean and full. Now I just need to go to bed.)

See you all in the morning.

Berlin Day One - Arrival

I'm here! It took long enough and I'm quite tired/hungry, but I'm now in my hotel room (very nice) and I've talked to Karen for a while, unloaded my stuff, and taken a shower. Now I'm going to go find a bite to eat somewhere around here.

Getting here was interesting: the bus that I thought would take me very near my hotel was nowhere to be seen outside the airport, so after I bought a 7-day travel card I hopped on one of the other buses and planned my way to the hotel using the subway. It was going well until I got off the first subway and learned that the subway line (U1) is closed for construction until October. So that put me a few blocks more than I planned away from Hotel Bogota, but I walked the six or seven blocks from the subway (called the U-bahn) to the hotel.

I've only taken a few pictures of my room so far, so I'll try to get them up soon for everyone to see.

I think I'll be sleeping in late in the morning, but I need to find out when breakfast is served so I can eat that meal for free everyday. It's a good thing that something is free - as it turns out, the Internet is not free. It costs 13 euros per day, which as you all know, I will cough up to stay connected with the world.

Talk to you all later!

Berlin Day One - Travel

So far, so good on the travels to Berlin. I am now at the Amsterdam Airport, exhausted and hungry, but I'm just fine otherwise.

Checking in at Memphis was simple enough, and after the family and I ate supper, I went through security and walked to the terminal (at the end of airport, no less.) Fortunately, they were already boarding, so I stood in line and then got on the plane. Not waiting around was pretty nice.

The flight was good despite my inability to fall asleep. Northwest Airlines has improved their overseas planes; they are now using Airbus A330s which have a much better entertainment system (built into the back of the seat in front of you with myriad movie choices.) I watched "21" and nibbled at the provided dinner (not so good) before attempting to fall asleep. I mostly spent the evening with my eyes closed, wishing myself to sleep, struggling with the seat to find a comfortable position (I had some bad lower back pain which was finally solved by putting the provided pillow behind it) and watching both the flight map and information on my screen. We had significant tail wind at 38000+ feet, upwards of 100 mph most of the way here, so we arrived in Amsterdam early.

There were a few interesting moments: there were several children on board, and at least three of them had tantrums sometime while we were in flight. Also, around half way through the flight we were awakened by the stewardesses asking over the intercom if there were any nurses or doctors on board. A man fell (passed out) in the aisle just behind my row of seats. It wasn't all that entertaining, but it was interesting to note that there were at least 4 doctors and a med school student on board. I had just started to fall asleep at that point, too.

My flight to Berlin doesn't leave for another 3 hours, and my 6 Euro/30 minuted internet is going to run out soonish, so I'll update you again when I arrive at my hotel.

Tchüss!

Observations from Governor's School for the Humanities

Over the past few weeks I have had the fortune of helping Dr. Robert Nanney, chair of the Department of Communications, with the Governor's School for the Humanities newspaper.

In case you are unfamiliar with the idea of Governor's School, the program is one of several in the state in which exceptional high school juniors and seniors go to a university for five weeks to gain some experience in higher education. They take a class or two for college credit, attend lectures on various topics and work on a variety of extracurricular projects, including the newspaper (or yearbook, photography, videography, etc.)

UT Martin hosts both the Governor's School for the Humanities (GSH) and GS for the Agricultural Sciences. There are also GS's for the Arts and for the Sciences somewhere else in the state.

Bu enough of the background, right?

Earlier in the year, I gave consideration to being a counselor for the GSH students, but decided I would be able to make more money in my usual job at the Instructional Technology Center (money being the primary motivation for having summer jobs, especially for a poor college student with the insatiable itch to travel overseas...)

So instead, I volunteered to help the GSH newspaper (luckily for me, they are paying.)

Everyday, the newspaper staff meets in a classroom next to The Pacer office to discuss stories and the progress being made toward putting together the final product: a 16-page newspaper that will cover all the important events at Governor's School.

My job is to do whatever needs to be done (note to self: reword that description for the resume...) I've set up an e-mail account and distribution list for the staff. I've kept a list of all the stories assigned and e-mailed them out in a story budget to the staff. I've organized the network space for their stories, photos and pages to be stored where they can be accessed from The Pacer office. I've worked with the executive editor on how to organize the paper, and early next week we will start working on page layout.

For those of you who know how much effort I put into production of The Pacer every week during the school year, the work I'm doing for the GSH newspaper may seem tedious or insignificant. I seriously do have to tell myself to let them have their fun and not do too much for them, but the real fun for me is helping with the instruction. Nothing confirms my choice to become a professor more than working with younger students on something hands-on.

Another observation I have made is that I'm glad I have chosen to teach at the collegiate level. Much as I love the enthusiasm of these high schoolers, I'm frequently reminded of how far they will need to come before they are fully able to handle college life in a mature fashion.

Don't get me wrong, I see it in some of them, but the majority of them currently demonstrate their lacking by frequently vocalizing hatred at middle school and high school cheerleaders on campus for UT Martin's Cheer Camp and the Ag Governor's School students. I feel like making a speech telling them to get over themselves and learn to get along, but that is one life lesson that is often quite difficult for even the smartest high school student.

Anyway, I make no promises on if I will update the blog again during the GSH experience, but if sometime sparks my interest or thought, you'll probably read about it here.

Vacation, The End

So much for updating more than once.

Things got busy, we had fun, I didn't want to update the blog. So there.

The UK visit was a little lack-luster. The Geography Department was less than helpful as far as having information available (they pointed me to their Web site) and the Office of Graduate Studies was closed for a two-hour meeting while we were there. But driving around Lexington was fun, and useful for getting a feel for the town.

Today we drove back after stopping at Lexington Greens at some kind of cool grocery store (similar to World Market, I think? You know, the kind that Karen goes ga-ga over...) and a bookstore, where I promptly spent 40 bucks on a primer book on architectural styles, a Berlin-specific moleskine and a copy of The Iliad for $3.50.

Now we are at home, and we were hit by a couple small showers as we unloaded, so Karen and I decided to stay at the house until it quits raining. Mom also mentioned the words "pizza" and "supper" so we're sticking around supper.

I uploaded a few more photos to Flickr, but the shots from UK and Lexington are on my camera in the car.

Vacation, Take One

Vacation is here!

Yesterday my family left on vacation for Cumberland Falls State Park in southeast Kentucky. After about six hours of driving in the rain, we arrived and checked into a very nice two story cabin that could sleep about 10 people. Three TVs. Cable. Kitchen. 2.5 bathrooms. Very nice. We win.

Aside from taking in the rainy Kentucky scenery yesterday, Karen, Rachel, Blair and I played Wii Fit for several hours last night, while Mom and Dad did their own thing.

This morning we got up relatively late and then walked/hiked around the falls area on the Cumberland River. It was very pretty, and I'm uploading pictures to Flickr right now. I'll keep them updated as I can throughout the week.

Vacation has, of course, had its humorous anecdotes.

Take just a minute ago for example: Karen and I have been in the lodge using the Internet for the last hour, and she was getting thirsty so we went to find a drink machine. Because she brought her laptop in her purse-bag-thing, her wallet is at the cabin, and I just have one, $1 bill. We got down to the vending machines and were so excited to see that they have Diet Dr Pepper.

Only one problem, though: the Diet Dr Pepper is in the bottle vending machine, which costs $1.50. Our excitement slightly lowered, we then tried to put our dollar in the 12 oz can vending machine which costs $1. It didn't take my money. Instead of being smart and going to the front desk to ask for change, we tried to put it in an older looking food vending machine to get change (Karen's idea, I might add.) Did we get our change? You guessed it. The machine sat there staring at us blankly.

$1.00


$1.00


What's your problem? Why do you want change? You put in your $1.00.


$1.00

DAH! So Karen and I decided to buy the least thirst-causing candy available in a land of salty, sugary goodness: an Almond Joy bar.

We now have $0.25 and nothing to solve our thirst problems.

I'll update again when I get the chance!

My Weekend

The past few days have been interesting. With Karen gone over the weekend, I found myself at times bored out of my mind, and at others occupied in some of the strangest ways...

Take for instance Thursday night. While a lot of my friends were hanging out at D201 (University Village apartment of Rhett, Zach, Dennis and Chris) apparently giving Zach a mullet I was uninformed, sitting in my room playing Super Smash Bros. Melee. (Note that the link is to a Facebook photo; those of you without a Facebook account won't be able to see it.)

But then on Friday I went to lunch at La Canasta with Joe Caldwell, something we haven't done since our first summer on campus (I think.) I spent a good part of the afternoon working on a Powersearch It! widget for one of the Weldon Library's Web pages. It was the most complicated coding I've had to do in a while. Nothing at UTM requires that much work.

Friday night I successfully made plans to head to D201 to hang out and play video games with the guys (at which point I saw Zach's mullet in person...) We got in some good Super Smash Bros. Brawl before watching Battlestar Gallactica (I was completely lost.)

Then things got more interesting on Saturday. Blair and I helped Dad put up a new set of attic stairs to the attic in my parents' house. We all almost died at one point or another. In case you didn't know - attic stair units are basically all one piece and very heavy. When we got the old one out (hard enough) we then had to lift the new one through the hole in the ceiling vertically and then angle it around to fit in the hole correctly. While doing this we found out that 1) the hole wasn't cut perfectly by whomever back when the house was built, so the hole was slightly snug, and 2) Blair's head and my right hand are really strong.

Because the hole wasn't exactly perfect, one end of the stairs' frame wouldn't fit into the hole. This caused it to fall on Blair's head at one point (he was standing on some makeshift scaffolding directly underneath the opening.) While Blair was readjusting the scaffolding a few minutes after that, Dad decided to hammer at the snug end and that was all it took to loosen the entire opening. Since it was staying so perfectly, nobody was keeping the stairs in place and I barely caught the falling attic door/stairs with my right hand. Guess my fingers are stronger than I thought. Must be from all the video game playing.

So there's a public service announcement for all of you: Play video games. It might just save your life.

News du jour

Karen and I made a couple of important decisions today, after we spent a good deal of time discussing things after work.

In no particular order:

We decided to begin looking at apartments around Martin, so after a Taco Bell run, we drove to a few spots in town. We looked at different apartments from the outside and got names and numbers. We won't need one for a year, but one can never start the data gathering process too early.

Second, we decided that we are going to get a Westie when we get married. We have discussed on and off every few weeks for the last six months what kind of dog we want to get, when to get it, etc. We recently began looking for dogs that don't shed much and that have hair instead of fur, because we are 99.5 percent sure that Karen is allergic to certain dogs (Rachel and Blair's Murray, for instance).

So we decided on Westies. They fit our carefully planned list of criteria, and besides, who could resist something this cute?

With all this busyness, I didn't get to have my photo adventure. Oh well. Suggestions are still welcome, and on top of that challenge, I'm issuing a new one!

I've been on Flickr a LOT lately at work (seven hours a day, only one or two hours of work to be done) and I've noticed that many of the top photographers on Flickr have at some point in the recent past shot a year-long series of self portraits. I thought this was a fabulous idea, and was contemplating taking on such a project myself.

But then Karen reminded me that I'm not so photogenic. And she didn't exactly volunteer to model and be my subject, either.

I've thought of a few more ideas: 365 days of UTM, 365 landscapes, but there are problems with these ideas. I'm not at UTM every single day of the year, and there are plenty of days where no interesting landscapes come into focus on my camera.

So therefore I'm extending the challenge to you. What can I photograph for 365 days? Be original. Best of luck. I'll let you know when one of you/I come up with anything.

In the meantime, enjoy more Westie photos.

Now accepting suggestions

I've been crazed today with a desire to go take pictures of something/anything cool. Problem is, West Tennessee is covered with clouds this afternoon and will continue to be through tomorrow's thunderstorms.

So I want suggestions of what I can do to scratch this metaphorical itch. Post comments here. E-mail me. Call me. Send up smoke signals. Whatever works.

I promise to post the photos on Flickr in a timely/becoming manner that will recognize the person who comes up with the best suggestion.

And if, by chance, no body reads this until tomorrow or the weekend, your suggestions are still welcome!

Danke!

Still got a lot of the world to see...

I was reminded courtesy of a Facebook applet that I still have a lot of the world to see... Need to get started on that.

Bits and Pieces

In case some of you haven't noticed, I'm now twittering, which amounts to writing the occasional update to what I'm doing with my life. The "tweets" as they are called show up in the right column over there. Go check it out.

Also, I bought my own domain name this weekend, matt-cook.com. You will all want to update your bookmarks to get to my blog which is now at http://www.matt-cook.com. I'll also find some time to get an actual Web site up at www.matt-cook.com. Eventually.

TaTa, and happy Monday.

Cleaning House

No, this isn't a post about my favorite dusting devices. Nor is it about the fact that I need a vacuum cleaner. Badly.

This is a post about Communications Career Day. I cleaned house.

I didn't really know what to expect going into the luncheon today, an annual event at which the Communications Department gives out a few scholarships and other awards to its students for their work over the year(s). I guess I thought it would be nice to win a scholarship.

Well, fortunately and maybe amazingly, I won three. It's basically incredible, because I'm losing my Tennessee Lottery Scholarship after the fall semester. Unless, of course, Tennessee's lawmakers get off their duff and do something with the scholarship revision legislature instead of passing it from one committee to another, to the Senate/House floor and back again.

So assuming that our state government will follow its style of incapacitation, I needed these scholarships pretty badly, if for no other reason than to save the money from fall for spring.

I'm going to bet that not too many of the Communications faculty read my blog on a regular basis, but if you're out there, thanks for thinking of me.

Photo Lesson for Wednesday

I know that there are myriad photo lesson Web sites out there in the vastness of the Internet. (It is a series of tubes, after all.)

Today I reminded of a very valuable lesson about the importance of white balance that I think the world should at least have the opportunity to read. So with a little Fleetwood Mac on the iTunes (Don't Stop/Yesterday's Gone - the live version with what sounds to be a marching band accompanying them) let's get down to it.

Backstory: As I was riding my bike to Gooch today from my voice lesson I passed the awesome tree shown above, which is right outside of the Honors Center. You can tell spring is coming just by looking at the tree, and for once I noticed it. Hey, sorry tree. I've been busy lately.

So as luck would have it, my camera was waiting for me in The Pacer office. I let Will borrow it yesterday to photostaff Cheryl DeYeso's art show. He left his in that place that he lives. Not sure where that is exactly...

Anyway, I get up to the office and throw my stuff in my chairs—yes I need two, one for sitting and one for stuff—and then grab the camera.

Unsure of go about shooting the beauty in the world outside, I headed to Tomi's office for a morning Reese's break. Then it occurred to me: Tomi's window looks down on the tree, adding a unique perspective to my tree.

"Perfect!" I think. Only there's one problem. The blasted rain has covered Tomi's window in a stippling of water droplets, but I decided they would just have to add to the effect.

I saddle up to the window and move the blinds, then take my first few shots. It takes a little time as I wait for students to be out of the shot (or in the shot if they are interesting enough).

Tomi comes in about half-way through my shoot.

"What are you doing?!" she asks in a typical Tomi voice that could just have well been asking why I had been stupid enough to staple my fingers together or something.

"I couldn't pass up the opportunity to shoot this tree. Have you noticed it lately?" I responded. Her curiosity satisfied, we both went about our business like nothing was strange about me hovering over her computer desk to photograph a tree. She's cool like that.

The lesson here: I kept wondering what I could do to fix how gray/blue my first few photos were. I couldn't capture the light as it actually showed up in front of me, and it was frustrating. But then I came to my senses—too blue (cool) means white balance! A quick switch from auto white balance to the cloudy preset was all it took to yield the difference shown in the comparison photo at the top of the post. Pretty much awesome.

That does it for today. Just remember to keep white balance in mind when in the field on a cloudy day!

The Future

Ever wonder what the future may have in store?

Boy I sure do.

In case you are wondering, this post is only semi-professional in nature, but I didn't want to go to the trouble of using Dreamweaver to update my mCook Web site. I know. I'm a slacker. Whatev.

So anyway, back to the future. (It's good to be punny sometimes.)

At some point in my life I stopped daydreaming on a regular basis about how I wanted my future to turn out. I don't know why; I don't know when. I just stopped. Maybe I was disillusioned, maybe hurt from a relationship or two...but regardless, I stopped doing it on a regular basis.

Now, "regular basis" are two key words there. I still daydream from time to time, and I do think about the future, but these days I'm more apt to be planning for the future instead of dreaming, waiting for it to come smack me in the face.

A few things have made me aware of this:

1) Spring Break free time. Spring Break has been good, mostly. I haven't accomplished nearly as much as I wanted to/should have. I need to read more about Berlin. I definitely need to get caught up in meteorology. I'm like four labs and six chapters behind. No joke. But the break has had its high points, too. I've had three birthday dinners, and my birthday was a week ago. That's pretty amazing. Take my advice: turn 21 as often as you can. People like to feed you at this age, apparently. Other than just my stomach, the rest of me has enjoyed the break by relaxing, sleeping in, playing cards/catch with K and family. All of the free time has given me plenty of opportunities to think, and that has been the primary reason for becoming aware of my lack of future-dreaming.

2) The second reason for remembering how I used to think my future would turn out came about from an unlikely source —pulling a box of cards off of my bookshelf last week that haven't been used since middle school. Back in the day, a couple friends and I would spend every day we had off from school and half the summer playing cards at one of their mom's office in downtown Martin and then go (religiously) at three o'clock to the local card shop (at the time) Home Plate. This was our heyday of dreaming and (dare I say) scheming. We started playing guitars. We started wishing we could drive. We started thinking about girls. (Well, at least I did.) And then high school came. And we lost one of our friends to a move to Massachusetts. And then I got bogged down with school and stuff (and girls...and band...etc.) And somewhere in there the blinders were put on so that I couldn't see much past graduating high school.

3) The final reason for becoming aware of the lack of future-dreaming is that my brother-in-law Blair told us tonight that he won't be going to UK for grad school, at least next year. He's still waiting on East Carolina University, which is another fine music school. The trouble is, the geography program at ECU isn't stellar and it doesn't have the focus that I want for grad school.

As you can probably guess, I let myself dream a little when he said he was applying at UK because UK has an excellent grad program in human geography, and so I started looking a little closer at what they had to offer. I had a dream. There's no telling what may happen with that dream. I would be happy even if the four of us (B, my sister, K and me) didn't end up in the same area after we leave Martin, but I can't help but think that it would be much more fun and enjoyable if we all did end up in the same place.

The odds aren't exactly stellar for us ending up at the same university, given that there are only a handful of universities with great music schools and great human geography programs. Dreaming was fun for a while, but realism inevitably settles in and sets up shop.

I am a self-described realist; others often confuse this for pessimism. Some people wonder why I am a realist, and I'm not entirely sure why I see the world the way I do, but I suspect that it comes down to change and how it is handled. Change has made me strive to see what is real, what is out there in black and white, instead of what would be ideal.

Change has made me a writer, an editor, a geographer, a traveler, a Germanophile, and lately, a supporter of the Democratic party. There, I said it. I want Barrack Obama to be our next president. But enough politics. In high school, and certainly in middle school, I would have called you liar if you told me I'd be all those things in 4-8 years.

I don't have a witty saying to end this post, and I don't really want to search for an inspiring JFK quote to show that maybe there is still some hope for the future.

But I did anyway.

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." ~John F. Kennedy

Water, water...

Live, from the Dixie, it's Tuesday night!

I'm sitting in the basement of the Dixie Carter, set to perform in under an hour for the West Tennessee Higher Education Symposium's annual choral festival. As interesting as that is...it's mostly hot and crowded.

Which leads me to my point: Water is amazing.

I realize that was a poor transition. Get over it.

I've beeen meaning to blog for the last two weeks about how amazing water is. Meteorology in particular has heightened my awe of the precious molecule H2O.

I drink around two to three liters of water a day. People say that is great. I say they should drink more (cough cough, Karen...) The body is made of what, 50 to 70 percent water? And yet, people pump themselves full of dehydrating carbonated sugar water (e.g. soda) instead of the good stuff. Granted, I'm a little susceptible to the ole Diet Dr. Pepper, but I still drink water like it's going out of style.

But water does more than just fill our bodies and make us feel guilty about not drinking enough at New Years.

Water destroys mountains. Water fills deltas and river beds with silt, making regions like the Nile, the Rhein and the Mississippi fertile enough to support millions of people through agricultural production.

Water makes geologists and physical geographers look bad, because their precious rocks and landforms are no match for water. Most earth scientists will claim that they embrace water's effects, but I suspect they are just covering their envy of its power.

Basically, water makes me happy...so respect that.

Let's play catch up

So, as promised nearly two months ago, I'm uploading photos from Reelfoot today. It's the first real chance I've had since before break. To my defense, I was gone and busy for most of the break. Now that I'm back, I'm swamped with homework and myriad other things. Just know that I'm slacking off for you. Check out the results here.

With any luck I'll be able to go through my photos from Choir Tour and upload them to Flickr in the near future. Then I would like to record some thoughts about California, Arizona and Nevada in the blog. We'll see what happens.